


now that i found you

by starbled



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Flowers, Soulmates, Touch-Starved, VLD Canon Is Not A Thing That Exists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 08:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18116999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbled/pseuds/starbled
Summary: Lotor spent the better part of his existence thinking himself a wasteland, a body in which nothing can grow. Turns out, some things still do.*That soulmate AU in which flowers grow throughout your body that represents your soulmate.





	now that i found you

**Author's Note:**

> for hiyo! if there was anyone who could make flowers bloom on my body, i think it'd be you. thank you for helping me grow softly.

“You saved me, you know.”

  
Earth is many different things, but some are still the same. The sky will always be too big and too far and him hungry to close that distance, to know how the sky tastes sitting in his belly. Camaraderie is earned, and not without a little blood. Every time Lotor thinks he understands something, another will come to show him he doesn’t.

 

And Allura is the center, in whatever world, whatever universe.

 

Always, she will be this soft, this warm.

 

Always, there is light to touch him, so long as Allura’s hand remains in his.

 

*

 

The first day Lotor tastes blood is the day he notices a flower, pink and white and crushed, right beneath his clavicle. His armor falls to the floor, stained and battered and forgotten as he touches the thing, examining it in the mirror. Long petals. A glowing center. Nothing he recognizes, not from research and not from experience, and certainly not from the Galra. Life is manufactured here, come out dripping neon and silent. Nothing this soft gets to exist.

 

He goes to pull at the petal, intending to pluck the thing, and feels his skin pull with it.

 

Lotor stops. Pulls again. Watches, enraptured, at the stretch of his skin and how he can see the stem come right from his chest, the bright green of it, nearly made neon under the ship’s light.

 

“Huh,” he says.

 

*

 

Allura doesn’t pause in her movements, hands leisurely stroking through his hair. Reclined on his back, head in her lap, Lotor can feel her answering hum starting from her core, and turns his head to the warmth of it. His nose brushes her stomach, and her hum startles into a giggle.

 

*

 

Lotor was born with an engineer’s mind and a conqueror’s hunger. When he wants something, he will study it, learn it, and not until he’s devoured every piece of information that he can will he be content.

 

It takes him until tomorrow to understand what the flower in his chest means, and two seconds after that to know it can’t exist here. There's no place for love, and pity to whoever is on the other end. He would not wish a fate tied to him on anyone.

 

The same night, he stares at himself in the mirror as he plucks the flower from his chest. Breaking bones have hurt less, and he stumbles over, shocked at the pain of it but only that. He’s no stranger to some blood, and wipes at the wound neatly. Puts his armor back. Then throws the flower into an incinerator on his way back to the bridge.

 

*

 

Her other hand, grasped gently and held on Lotor’s chest, squeezes. Against the inside of his wrist Lotor can feel a bud blooming, and raises their linked hands to watch the process. Allura smooths her palm around the curve of his head.

 

“I think you will have to be more specific than that,” she says to him on the tail end of her laugh, voice a little breathless, a little too high.

 

Just because he can, Lotor turns to nuzzle his nose into her stomach again. All to hear that breathless giggle, feel her warm and curling around him.

 

*

 

Two things Lotor immediately notes about Allura, when he gets a good look at her. The first, that she commands her space flawlessly; tall without any blustering, imposing but with room to breathe. She’s every bit the commander, the royal, the only real opponent to match him in ages.

 

He’s impressed, and reverent, and when he takes note of the second remarkable thing about her --petals around her neck, peeking out of her collar, wrapped around her arms, fluttering beneath her lashes-- he’s

breathless.

 

*

 

Purple petals are growing, bursting from the bud with force. An explosion unto itself, the way they fan out, six petals total, covering the part of Allura’s wrist that Lotor’s thumb is pressed to. Curiously, he moves his finger to feel a petal.

 

Allura twists her wrist from his. Not with any force and not for far, but enough so he’s no longer touching that strange, unearthly flower.

 

Lotor doesn’t pretend to hide his smirk.

 

“Tease,” Allura scoffs, but a single flick of his gaze shows the obvious curve of her smile. “You know the new ones are ticklish.”

 

“Really?” He makes a half hearted gesture at taking her wrist back, only for Allura to laugh as she pulls her arm further away. “I wasn’t aware, Princess. If you will let me--” another grab, and Allura shoves her arm in the opposite direction, “--we could test this--”

 

With a silent, but still somehow audible triumph, Allura stretches her arm high above her. Thinking herself victorious, as if he isn’t literally twice her size, arm length included.

 

Lotor’s pointer finger just grazes the flower and she’s squirming, the hand in his hair scraping at his scalp. His smirk turns into a full grin.

 

Now this? Is a victory. And well earned it is.

 

*

 

“Do flowers not--”

 

Allura doesn’t trip over words, not normally. Lotor has seen her composed, commanding, elegant. Here she seems almost shy, looking everywhere but at him, bottom lip between her teeth. The flowers at her cheekbones curl in on themselves at the movement, as if they don’t wish to be part of this conversation either.

 

Lotor waits, as is polite. (And maybe to see her mind work in real time, running over her words, ever the princess and diplomat and genuinely sweet girl, wishing not to offend anyone.)

 

“Does Galran biology--” he can see her visibly swallow her next words, looking aghast at herself for even thinking to say such a thing.

 

He decides to save her the embarrassment. Lotor is not so cruel as they would say.

 

“Such a phenomenon,” he tells her in the same voice he’d use to describe a patch of grass, “occurs in Galra as, it seems, in nearly every other species.”

 

“Including you?”

 

No, is on the tip of Lotor’s tongue, but that’s not right, not exactly. He pauses with the weight of it, and mechanically, his mind assembles itself. Goes through the list of memories, flipping back, and back, to thousands of years ago, to a single flower and the blood that welled in its absence and how he never did manage to fill it back up. He carried that emptiness around, spent so long ignoring it, he simply forgot it was there.

 

Now it’s a throbbing thing, an ache that demands acknowledgement.

 

“Yes.” He says, at last. Has to clear his throat, after a too long pause in which nothing more is given. His smile, he knows, looks forced, but some things can’t be helped. “Even I.”

 

Allura’s gaze is searching. Lotor raises his brows, offering her no resistance. There isn’t much there for her to see, anyways.

 

“Do you regularly cut yours, then?”

 

Lotor doesn’t realize he’s been digging his nails in until his arms have fallen slack at his side, and he feels the blood trickle. Not a glance is spared as he wipes his palm on the side of his pants.

 

“No.”

 

Allura’s brows rise and, ‘ _Amazing,_ ’ thinks Lotor, how she wears her judgement so gracefully, able to land a hit without any of the punch. He could almost smile at the reaction.

 

“My flowers simply do not grow, Princess. Not,” he continues, softly, when her lips part, “anymore.”

 

*

 

Allura lets him have this because Lotor knows when to relent, letting up his touch so the sensitivity doesn’t give way to discomfort, so that she remains smiling, and laughing, and warm and bright.

 

His palm slides down to cup at her lower arm. She places hers back on his chest, and crawls its way up to cup the side of his neck, fingers plucking at his ear when he starts dancing his nails along the length of her, expertly avoiding the flowers bloomed there with a special type of knowing that can only come from exposure, from experience.

 

First he’s touched every place the flowers bloom with his hands. Then followed his mouth.

 

If there’s any ritual the two have, it’s this:

 

Lotor starts with the inside of her palms, turning his head to kiss it. He kisses it soft, pulls back, then kisses it again. Without prompt, Allura moves her arm until her wrist is where Lotor’s mouth is. The newly bloomed flower is silk against his cheek, when he presses a kiss to the spot right beside it.

 

If they were alone, and he had any desire to lift himself from Allura’s lap, he would trail his kisses upwards, leaving pecks up to her collarbone. He’d find the curve of her neck and stay there, breathing her in, until he can feel their heartbeats move in tune.

 

And Allura would let him, sitting still as he all but traces her with his mouth, unspoken words imprinted into her skin with every touch.

 

 _My fealty to you_ , on the back of her hand. _My life is in your hands_ , where he lingers at her palm. _I adore you_ , to her collarbone. _I need you_ , to the place behind her ear. _I love you_ , to both cheekbones, then again, and again, _I love you, I love you, I love you._

 

Lotor doesn’t realize he’s trembling until Allura’s lips touch his forehead, her fingers finding his. Her hold is soft, conscious of the flower between them.

 

He takes a great breath of air. Feels it catch in his throat, burning.

 

Until Allura’s mouth moves to his temple and there, he feels her smile. Feels, all too much, the kiss she presses to the delicate pink flower.

 

Then, he exhales. Then, he’s breathing. The burn ebbs, and he’s left warm all over.

 

Eyes shut closed, Lotor brings their linked hands back to his chest. Carefully he uncurls Allura’s fingers, presses her hand until it lays, gentle, flower down.

 

“Like this,” he says. Thinks he’s smiling, but can’t be so sure. “You did it just like this.”


End file.
